Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) - What Should Have Happened

 Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)
What Should Have Happened...

Hey, hey!  From the End Credit Scene for "Thunderbolts* (2024)" and the trailers for "The Fantastic Four: First Steps", my brain took those bits and pieces and made its own story as a sort of dime-store Kuleshov Effect (also known as Russian Montage Theory, where connected images can be turned into a story inside the minds of the viewers, named for Russian director, Lev Kuleshov, from his works in the 1910's and 1920's).

That story suggested Silver Surfer shows up declaring the world is marked for Death, Reed says "I dunno if y'all will be safe" as they all pile into a rocket ship, a world is destroyed, and a Multi-versal Ship shows up at the end of "Thunderbolts*".  It would have been darkly funny if they had done that, with the crowds of Earth first clapping and cheering them on to fight Galactus, and the having it dawn on them that they may not be coming back and they are hightailing it to the next universe over.  As I said, darkly, darkly funny.

Anyhoo, I was there opening night for "The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)", and while it was the best of the FF movies (damning with faint praise, I know) and it was great to see giant Galactus stomping through New York City, there were a number of things that missed the mark, IMHO.

I did really like the retro-future look of the movie, and the characterizations were very good, but there were a few parts of the story that didn't quite work for me.  Reed is supposed to be the smartest person in the world, but does a number of rather dumb things, IMHO.  "Galactus said he wanted our child in order to save the Earth.  Can you imagine?  Anyways, I'm gonna work on a device that teleports the entire Earth.  Here's to hoping it works!"  That plan seemed... less than ideal.

Also, the Thing's beard... Blech!  I didn't care for that all too much.

Of course, setting it in Universe 828 had an unexpected payoff that warmed my cold, dank heart (there was something about that universe name that caught my attention enough to remember the number until the end--I guess my unconscious was signaling me, but wasn't quite able to piece it together).  And, so as not to keep y'all in suspense, 8-28 is for August 28th, Jack Kirby's birthday.  Cool!

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STEP ONE:  Here are the Digital Inks, done on a 2,000px x 3050px canvas @300dpi in Clip Studio Paint.  'Cuz I'm a dum-dum, I accidentally deleted the pencils sometime when I wasn't paying attention, so no pencils to barely look at and move on past this time.

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STEP TWO:  Here are the digital colors.  Everything was a bit rushed, as I have so many other irons in the fire at the moment.  But, I wanted to get this done before October 1, 2025.

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Done Digitally in Clip Studio Paint.

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